ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) senior leader Hammad Azhar on Friday said that the party’s offer to hold talks was only extended to the real decision-makers and not the “puppets imposed on the nation”.

The statement from Azhar comes after Interior Minister Rana Sanuallah said that “serious negotiation” can only be held with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

However, Azhar, who was recently made a part of the PTI’s negotiation team, equated holding negotiations with the leadership of the ruling alliance as nothing but a waste of time.

“We don’t want to waste time negotiating with puppets,” Azhar said in a statement, saying the incumbent rulers are “imposed people with no vote bank”.

He said that the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led government was hiding behind crutches. Azhar said that “for the sake of restoration of the Constitution and democracy, negotiations have only been offered with the real decision-makers.”

For the past several weeks, the PTI has been looking for an opening with the powers that be but to no avail.

Recently, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah lashed out at the former premier over his reluctance to engage in talks with political leaders.

The interior minister said that Imran Khan will have to call Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif directly and engage in productive discussion instead of focusing on forming committees if he truly desired dialogue.

Over the years, Khan has been refusing to directly sit across the table with his political rivals as he has built his narrative on declaring them as corrupts and looters and fears that shaking hands with them would jolt his narrative and dent his vote bank.

Being the opposition leader in the National Assembly as well as the Prime Minister, Shehbaz has held out an olive branch to his bitter rival several times but things have gone beyond verbal statements only once when the government and PTI leaders recently sat down to decide dates for polls.

However, the government-PTI talks ended in a stalemate as the PTI leadership said they did not see any hope in the talks with the governments. Then, May 9 happened and things changed.

However, the PTI still believes that it should only talk to the powers that be instead of its political rivals.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023